even this story would be
carried to the ears of the commissioners, and his political opinions be
again misrepresented.

Another thing that came to disturb his peace of mind was his quarrel
with Mrs. Riddell of Woodley Park, where he had been made a welcome
guest ever since his advent to this district. That Burns, in the heat of
a fever of intoxication, had been guilty of a glaring act of impropriety
in the presence of the ladies seated in the drawing-room, we may gather
from the internal evidence of his letter written the following morning
'from the regions of hell, amid the horrors of the damned.' It would
appear that the gentlemen left in the dining-room had got ingloriously
drunk, and there and then proposed an indecorous raid on the
drawing-room. Whatever it might be they did, it was Burns who was made
to suffer the shame of the drunken plot. His letter of abject apology
remained unanswered, and the estrangement was only embittered by some
lampoons which he wrote afterwards on this accomplished lady. The affair
was bruited abroad, and the heinousness of the poet's offence vastly
exaggerated. Certain it is that he became deeply incensed against not
only the lady, but her husband as well, to whom he considered he owed no
apology whatever. Matters were only made worse by his unworthy verses,
and it was not till he was almost on the brink of the grave that he and
Mrs. Riddell met again, and the old friendship was re-established. The
lady not only forgot and forgave, but she was one of the first after the
poet's death to write generously and appreciatively of his character and
abilities.

That the quarrel with Mrs. Riddell was prattled about in Dumfries, and
led other families to drop the acquaintance of the poet, we are made
painfully aware; and in his correspondence now there is rancour,
bitterness, and remorse more pronounced and more settled than at any
other period of his life. He could not go abroad without being reminded
of the changed attitude of the world; he could not stay at home without
seeing his noble wife uncomplainingly nursing a child that was not hers.
He cursed himself for his sins and follies; he cursed the world for its
fickleness and want of sympathy. 'His wit,' says Heron, 'became more
gloomy and sarcastic, and his conversation and writings began to assume
a misanthropical tone, by which they had not been before in any eminent
degree distinguished. But with all his failings his was still that
exa